More than half a century ago the Peruvian-born singer, Yma Sumac, who has died aged 86, became the voice and face of a musical style that freely mixed Broadway show tunes, Latin American folk-song and easy-listening arrangements. Initially untitled, the new musical genre came to be known as "exotica", and Sumac was crowned its "queen". Sumac rose from obscurity to fame, returned to obscurity then found herself again in the spotlight aged 70, . While the material she sang was often kitsch, her multi-octave voice stood out among the bland pop singers of Eisenhower's America, as did her outlandish image: marketed as a mixture of Carmen Miranda and Rider Haggard's She, Sumac was the very incarnation of fiery, primal Latina beauty (at least as far as Hollywood saw it).

Sumac was born Zoila Emperatriz Chávarri del Castillo in the village of Ichocán, in the Cajamarca region in the northern highlands of Peru. She sang and performed from an early age and when her family moved to Lima, she joined a folk dance troupe. In 1942 she met and married Moisés Vivanco, the leader of the Compañía Peruana de Arte. Vivanco recognised that Sumac, with her striking features and four-octave voice, was star material and built his orchestra around her. In 1943 Sumac began recording in Argentina for Peru's Odeon label. While popular in Peru, Vivanco realised that the local market was far too small and, in 1946, he and Sumac emigrated to New York City. There they performed in nightclubs as the Inca Taky Trio - Sumac singing, Vivanco playing guitar and her cousin, Cholita Rivero, dancing.

As Sumac's popularity grew the trio began touring the Borscht Belt (the upstate New York Jewish holiday circuit) and appearing on radio and television. In 1950 Sumac signed to Capitol Records in Hollywood. Paired with the gifted arranger and composer Les Baxter, Sumac's first release was a 10-inch vinyl EP called Voice of the Xtabay. Given little initial promotion, word of mouth turned the EP into a hit and soon Sumac was playing Las Vegas casinos and selling out such prestigious venues as Carnegie Hall and the Hollywood Bowl. Capitol kept her recording, largely with Baxter in control, and she remained popular across the decade. Her recordings were lushly arranged and aimed at a suburban audience's idea of Latin America - she was marketed as an Inca princess, belonging to a native tribe no anthropologist had heard of, and Sumac happily played along with such nonsense.

In 1954 Sumac starred in the Hollywood B-movie Secret of the Incas alongside a young Charlton Heston and in 1957 in Omar Khayyam. Her album covers played up a similar concept with exploding volcanoes, Easter Island-style carvings, jungle foliage, toucans and such surrounding the voluptuous Sumac.

By the early 1960s Sumac's popularity had waned as rock'n'roll took hold. She focused on touring internationally - even recording a live album in Bucharest, Romania - from 1961-66. In 1955 she and Vivanco had briefly divorced then remarried. In 1965 they divorced again and Sumac retired from performing the following year. In 1971 Baxter tried to shift her sound towards psychedelic rock. The album Miracles failed to sell, though it has since become a collector's item thanks to its bizarre stylings.

Sumac continued to perform occasionally in the US and Peru and, in 1987, was lured out of retirement by the producer Hal Wilmer to record I Wonder for an album of exotic interpretations of Disney songs. This led to an appearance on the TV show Late Night with David Letterman. Interest in her gathered pace and she began playing jazz festivals across North America, while a documentary, Yma Sumac - Hollywood's Inca Princess, brought her to a new, hip audience. It was this audience, enjoying the ironic pleasures of exotica and lounge music - sounds that rock fans had dismissed for decades - that led to the reissue of her 1950s albums on CD (by Rev-Ola in the UK), her music being featured on the soundtracks of films such as The Big Lebowski (1998) and rappers sampling her records. Yma Sumac was once again an American icon.

In 2006 the Peruvian government presented her with the Orden del Sol (Order of the Sun) and the Jorge Basadre medal for her efforts in popularising Peruvian music.